Last month for the first time I had more visitors from an android platform than iPhone on http://www.forexticket.com . IOS (iPhone+iPad) is still the most important platform but the growth of Android is huge. Mobile platforms represents now 16.7% of visitors.

Between July and november 2012 I observed a drop in mobile visitors (more important on iPhone than Android). The growth resumed after the 24th of december.

The Websense® ThreatSeeker® Network has detected that a FOREX trading website was injected with a malicious Java applet, which could install malware on the affected systems of the site’s users. FOREX is the foreign exchange market where international currencies are traded, and nowadays, it’s used by millions of people around the world.

The targeted website is a popular FOREX website called “Trading Forex,” located at hxxp://tradingforex.com. One of the questions that is raised when encountering such a compromise is whether some cybercriminal shift their focus from mainstream online money management systems of banks and stock exchanges to “easier wins” with online systems and services that are likely to be less mature from a security perspective. Another interesting fact is that the dropped backdoor at Trading Forex is written in Visual Basic.Net and requires the Microsoft’s.NET framework to be successfully installed and operational on the victim’s computer.

I’ve had the impression for some time that I’ve left Forexticket website to continue on its way without managing to improve its growth. Suddenly I feel like I’m standing still….and that’s not good for my motivation. As often happens, or indeed as always happens, it took me a while to get to grips with this problem. But as I turned it around in my head, I managed to put together a plan to kick start my motivation: let’s put together the means to get the website to the top, not just of the foreign exchange websites, but of the worldwide financial websites…It’s quite a challenge to take on the likes of Yahoo! Finance, money.cnn.com and Bloomberg. But since nothing is impossible in the virtual world, I think that we’ve got a chance of nipping at their heels and if we’ve got a chance we grab it. To do this I’m going to have to motivate myself and find the means to do it.

The engines for growth are pretty obvious in my opinion: increase the number of media and widen the content. We can increase the number of media by building apps and complete, ergonomic mobile websites. In fact we’ve already done that, but we want to do it better. As for content, we can access new markets in addition to foreign exchange, such as shares, indexes and commodities. The potential audience for these markets is much bigger than for foreign exchange.

Of course, we will have to take another look at our organization. Because if we are to work with increased quantities of data in conjunction with a wider audience, we will need more staff. That’s why we’re looking for people with skills in systems admin and it’s a cert that we’ll soon be looking for website developers to man the frontline too.
We will also need the financial resources to support this growth. I can see two solutions here: self financing or the famous fund-raising exercise.

Self financing has the advantage of leaving the partners with sole control and no need to account for their actions except to themselves. On the other hand, the resources are more limited, at least in the short term, which will have repercussions for growth.

I can also envisage fund-raising. The ideal would be a cash injection to cover 4 or 5 years, in the knowledge that the website is generating revenue which should increase year on year. The upside of fund-raising would be that the engines for growth could be fired up more quickly. The downside would be the dilution of our shares in the company and the arrival of a new shareholder. We need to investigate what kind of stake an investor would want in exchange for a cash injection over 5 years and how much we would be willing to give up.

Therefore, we have put everything in place to roll out our strategy for the next 5 years. This time I don’t see the figures doubling, I see them increasing tenfold. I know it won’t be easy, but I know it’s far from being impossible.

Given the incredible progress and innovation we’ve seen in mobile apps over the past few years, I’m not sure we’re any worse off at a macro-economic level, but things have definitely changed and Sparrow is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. The age of selling software to users at a fixed, one-time price is coming to an end. It’s just not sustainable at the absurdly low prices users have come to expect. Sure, independent developers may scrap it out one app at a time, and some may even do quite well and be the exception to the rule, but I don’t think Sparrow would have sold-out if the team — and their investors — believed they could build a substantially profitable company on their own. The gold rush is well and truly over.

I don’t remember that I received such email from Oanda. I will probably cut half of my positions on EUR/USD.

Due to the extreme volatility some market analysts foresee could result in the coming days, OANDA fxTrade will not accept any trading activity from 6:00 AM EST until approximately 3:00 PM EST, on Sunday, June 17, 2012. OANDA believes the convergence of a major market event during off-market hours represents a potential trading risk and has taken this rare step to protect traders from excessive rate fluctuations.

Please note that during this halt in trading, you can still access your account details but no trading activity will be accepted. For this reason, OANDA strongly recommends that all traders consider minimizing currency exposures prior to the trading halt.

If you do intend to maintain open positions during this period, be aware that OANDA will hold exchange rates steady during the trading halt. However, when trading resumes, rates will immediately adjust to the current market rate and it is possible that the updated rate could result in a margin closeout if the price has moved significantly against your positions. Therefore, it is your responsibility to ensure you have adequate funds in your account to prevent a margin closeout.

The ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has opened up new Internet domain names. Now you can buy the generic top level domain (gTLD) you want as .blabla, .forexticket and of course .forex
The new gTLD applcation window opened on 12 january and closed on 30 may 2012. Today the ICANN revealed the list of the gTLD that were applied.

In the list you can find:

.forex applied by IG Group

.cfd applied by IG Group

.trading applied by IG Group

.broker applied by IG Group

.saxo applied by saxobank

The fees are 185’000$ for the registration and it will cost $25’000 per year and per gTLD.

Two weeks ago, I was in Cyprus for the first B2B forex Expo. I rarely go these events but The weather was so cold in Ireland… I needed a week with a real sun. I certainly won’t move to Cyprus but I’ll probably come back for the next iFXexpo.

I met a lot of interesting people: media, brokers, social networks… And I learned that forex industry is not as technicaly in advance as I thought (mainly in mobile technology and social).

Oh it's me with Fxstreet's team! And I'm the one who doesn't drink

Next time I will prepare my trip better than I did. I arrived the hands in the pocket and I didn’t met everyone I wanted. It could be interesting if every company could ad two lines on the iFXexpo website: “what we do” and “what we need”, it’d help to organize our agenda.